A significant maturity gap in large organizations is that internal platform PMs don't treat their users (e.g., developers, finance) as customers. Applying customer-centric practices like problem framing and journey mapping to these stakeholders can dramatically improve outcomes.

In early stages, the key to an effective product roadmap is ruthlessly prioritizing based on the severity of customer pain. A feature is only worth building if it solves an acute, costly problem. If customers aren't in enough pain to spend money and time, the idea is irrelevant for near-term revenue generation.

Product leaders often try to implement agile best practices within their team, but fail because the surrounding organization still operates on a project-based model. The rest of the company treats the product team like a feature factory, handing over requests and demanding deadlines, creating immense internal friction.

When a product team is busy but their impact is minimal or hard to quantify, the root cause is often not poor execution but a lack of clarity in the overarching company strategy. Fixing the high-level strategy provides the focus necessary for product work to create meaningful value.

Instead of over-analyzing and philosophizing about process improvements, simply force the team to increase its cadence and ship faster. This discomfort forces quicker, more natural problem-solving, causing many underlying inefficiencies to self-correct without needing a formal change initiative.

A product team's effectiveness is not just about skills (competencies). It's equally dependent on the right behaviors (mindsets) and the supportive environment, culture, and leadership backing (resources). A full assessment must cover all three areas.

Dogfooding isn't enough. Founders should use every feature of their product weekly to develop a subjective feel for quality. Combine this with objective metrics like the percentage of unhappy customers and the engineering velocity for adding new features.

A single roadmap shouldn't just be customer-facing features. It should be treated as a balanced portfolio of engineering health, new customer value, and maintenance. The ideal mix of these investments changes depending on the product's life cycle, from 99% features at launch to a more balanced approach for mature products.

A true diagnostic for product maturity requires a 360-degree view. By surveying product leaders, their teams, cross-functional partners (like sales and engineering), and senior leadership, you can uncover critical perception gaps about your team's effectiveness.